Comment Re:Great on paper - but in real life? (Score 1) 227
What defines a "widespread pattern of errors?" In small elections or close elections, changing a small fraction of votes could affect the outcome.
Comment Great on paper - but in real life? (Score 5, Insightful) 227
This system assumes three things:
- Everyone participates - voters have to validate their vote afterward to make sure it's still correct.
- Everyone is perfect - people who incorrectly cast their vote will always suspect fraud, calling the entire election into question.
- Everyone is sane - individual voters do not lie about about their vote to game the system, cast doubt on the election, etc.
How Microsoft Has Changed Without Bill Gates 493
mightysquirrel writes "It's been a year since Bill Gates left Microsoft in his official capacity. At the time many speculated his departure would spark a significant shift in Redmond. But how much has really changed during Microsoft's first year without Gates?"
Submission + - Prizes for Finding Browser Bugs
fremen writes: uTest, a software testing company, is running a competition to give away cash prizes to anyone who discovers new bugs in IE8, Firefox 3.1, and Google Chrome. They're promising to send the final bug reports to all three companies (and credit the discoverer), so this seems like a fun way to do some testing while helping make each browser better. Sign-up is free, and they've already found over 200 bugs in 12 hours.
Submission + - Create Web services with Ruby on Rails (ibm.com)
jmalasko writes: "In this article, discover how the Action Web Service module implements Web services functionality in Ruby on Rails. Action Web Service creates server-side support for SOAP and XML-RPC Web service protocols. You can declare and publish APIs using Action Web Service."
Comment Re:A few tweaks, and... (Score 5, Insightful) 362
What you're really saying is that "if only the chip had been a little more expensive to produce things might have been different." Adding a few little tweaks to devices was a heck of a lot more expensive in the 80s than it is today. The reality is that had Intel done what you asked, the x86 might not have succeeded this long at all.
Feed Science Daily: Animated Beer Smooth To Pour (sciencedaily.com)
Researchers have developed innovative fluid special effects software that can pour a most realistic-looking stein of beer. Fluids researchers say the physics of bubble creation in carbonated drinks like beer is complex. “As you pour beer into a glass, you see bubbles appearing on what are called nucleation sites, where the glass isn’t quite smooth,” the developer said.
Submission + - Mars mission borrows technology from PS3, Xbox 360 (networkworld.com)
jbrodkin writes: "The same IBM processors in your Xbox 360, PS3, the car you drive and some of the world's fastest supercomputers are leaving for Mars today to support a NASA mission searching for extraterrestrial life. And this is no mere coincidence. Lessons learned from the incredible video throughput of the PlayStation 3 and the extreme scalability and reliability of mainframes factor into the processors being used on the Phoenix Mars Lander. Similarly, the experience building processors that make the most efficient use of energy on a spacecraft is helping IBM make data centers on Earth more efficient in a time when limitations of space and power are increasingly important.
"This is the onboard machine that runs all of the functions that will have to be performed somewhat autonomously on Mars when it lands," explains Dave McQueeney, chief technology officer for IBM's federal contracting business. "These are the computers inside the spacecraft that are responsible for the navigation, control, scientific instruments, power management ... the things that are the brains of the Lander itself.""
Forensic Analysis Reveals Al-Qaeda's Image Doctoring 285
WerewolfOfVulcan writes "Wired reports that researcher Neal Krawetz revealed some very interesting things about the Al-Qaeda images broadcast in the mass media. Analysis shows that they're heavily manipulated, a discussion meant to illustrate a new technique that can spot forgery in digital media. 'Krawetz was ... able to determine that the writing on the banner behind al-Zawahiri's head was added to the image afterward. In the second picture above showing the results of the error level analysis, the light clusters on the image indicate areas of the image that were added or changed. The subtitles and logos in the upper right and lower left corners ... were all added at the same time, while the banner writing was added at a different time, likely around the same time that al-Zawahiri was added, Krawetz says.'"
Journal Journal: Top program of all time? I choose Microsoft ________
What, in all my years of hacking, is my favorite application of all? What is the one program I would like to have with me on a desert island? Brace yourself...
Submission + - Australian court rules eBay auctions as binding
Ellis D. Tripp writes: "An Australian court has ruled that an eBay seller cannot back out of an auction sale once it is successfully completed. The court has ordered a seller to hand over a vintage airplane to an eBayer who bid just over the reserve price of $128,000, despite a subsequent non-eBay offer of over $200,000. More details here:
http://www.comcast.net/news/technology/index.jsp?c at=TECHNOLOGY&fn=/2007/08/03/730424.html"
http://www.comcast.net/news/technology/index.jsp?
Submission + - Is There Any Room For E-Mail in 'Enterprise 2.0'? (socialcomputingmagazine.com) 2
jg21 writes: According to this article in Social Computing Magazine, the increasingly widely used label Enterprise 2.0 signifies, above all, software enabling collaboration — what TFA calls "a many-to-many communication medium that creates interaction" – and therefore does *NOT* really include email, which the author characterizes as a "one-to-one communication medium ... more about instruction." What are the realistic chances that actual collaboration will become the number one form of communication in the enterprise, displacing email?
Journal Journal: McCain would hire Steve Ballmer to US Cabinet if Elected. 431
Astute blogger and part time programmer RMS found an interesting summary of John McCain's technical blunders from May 30th. While most people jumped all over McCain's wrong headed view of the network neutrality issue, fe
Submission + - Setting Up a small linux cluster
Davemania writes: I am working for a research group that requires to do a large amount of data analysis (each of these files could be up to 1 gig in size). We're planning on buying up to 10 pc with linux on them to do these scientific processing (matlab, etc ) but what would be the best configuration for these 10 linux boxes ? Preferably, we would like to maintain all the data on one server and send it out to the Linux box for processing automatically. What approach would be the best, clustering ? OpenMosix, Rock Cluster ? or just simply drop files into the share folder and remote desktop in ?
Submission + - Scares in space (msn.com)
Soft writes: `Did you hear the one about (...) the astronaut who became so despondent after his orbital experiment failed that his colleagues feared he would blow the hatch on the space shuttle?' Jon Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon, tells Alan Boyle's cosmic log about a number of horror stories which happened in space over the course of the space program.
(To ward off predictable jokes, there are none with diapers; that didn't happen in space, anyway.)
